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Connectives are conjunctions, prepositions, adverbs and other particles which share the function of encoding semantic relations between sentences, or rather, between semantic objects some of which can be meanings of sentences. The relata linked by any such relation will fall into one of four distinct categories: they will be physical objects, states of affairs, propositions, or pragmatic options (the atoms of human interaction). Physical objects constitute the conceptual domain of space, states of affairs the domain of time, propositions the epistemic domain, and pragmatic options the deontic domain. The relations encodable in any of these domains can be divided into four basic types: similarity relations, situating relations, conditional relations, and causal relations. Conceptual domains and types of relations define the universe of possible connections between semantic objects.
Connectives differ as to the interpretations they permit in terms of conceptual domains and types of relations. Very few connectives are specialized on relata of one certain category and relations of one certain type. Possible examples in German are später (‘later on’) and zwischenzeitlich (‘in the meantime’), which encode situating relations between states of affairs. Other connectives are specialized on relata of one certain category, but are underspecified with respect to the type of relation. An example is German sobald (‘as soon as’), which can only connect states of affairs, but accepts situating, conditional and causal readings. Connectives of a third group are specialized on relations of a certain type, but are underspecified with respect to the category of the relata. Examples of this kind are German weil (‘because’) and trotzdem (‘nevertheless’), which encode causal relations, but accept states of affairs, propositions and pragmatic options as their relata. Connectives of a fourth group are underspecified both for the category of relata and the type of relation. An example is German da (‘there’), which accepts relata of any category and allows for situating, conditional and causal readings. Connectives like und (‘and’) and oder (‘or’) exhibit an even higher degree of under specification, in that they allow for all kinds of relations and relata.
The present paper examines the relationship between pragmatics, semantics and grammar as subdisciplines of linguistics from three different perspectives. The first section gives a historical survey of their development during the 20th century and classifies linguistic schools according to their interest in different fields of research. The second part presents a systematic model of the field of objects to be investigated by linguistics, aiming at a more precise delimitation of its subdisciplines. Finally, in the third section, the division of labour between pragmatics, semantics and grammar is discussed in the light of the concrete example of verb valence.
Zur Semantik kausaler Satzverbindungen: Integration, Fokussierung, Definitheit und modale Umgebung
(2005)
This paper develops a theoretical model for the semantics of connectives, following central ideas of Reichenbachian tense semantics.
In a first step, the terminological and conceptual framework is presented and illustrated with German da. The meaning of a connective is modeled as a four-place-relation between the situated object E, a reference object R, a discourse anchor S and the speaker O. The relata can belong to one of four different classes of entities: physical object, event, proposition or act. Correspondingly, the relations are divided into four cognitive domains: space, time, alethics/epistemics, and deontics. In each domain, relations can be treated under three different perspectives: situation, condition or causation. A cross-classification of relational domains and perspectives provides a typology of connectives which is more consistent than the ones available in traditional grammar.
In the second part of the article, the analytic apparatus is refined, using German so as the main example. Following Roman Jakobson, a distinction is made between contiguity and similarity relations. Contiguity relations are typically encoded by functional categories, whereas similarity relations are encoded by lexical categories. However, there are a few connectives like so which encode similarity relations. A structural isomorphism between similarity and contiguity relations makes it possible to reinterpret so in certain contexts as an indicator of contiguity. In these cases, so is semantically weakened, particularly in relation to its definiteness. The model is extended to also, from which als descends etymologically.
The third part of the article contains the semantic characterization of als in its variants as an intransitive and transitive connective. Als is described paradigmatically, in terms of the semantic oppositions that distinguish it from da, so, wie and wenn. Like so, it originally encodes similarity relations, but in present day German its use has been extended, so that it may indicate contiguity relations as well. With da and so it shares the abstract relational meaning O-S,R,E. The main difference from da is its lesser degree of definiteness; in contrast to so, its use is almost exclusively temporal. Wie and wenn are indefinites, i.e. they do not establish a deictic backlink to the speaker and discourse context. Als indicates that the situated event temporally overlaps with a specific event of reference, whose factivity is presupposed. The reference event must be categorically predictable in the context of utterance. Als does not indicate temporal antecedence of the reference event in relation to the speech event; it only requires the identifiability of the reference event and its non-coincidence with the speech event.
In the last section, so-called "peripheral temporal clauses" are examined with respect to the syntagmatic interaction between aspectuality, intonational focus, serialization of clauses and the abstract relational meaning of als. The proposed semantic formula is shown to be capable not only of clarifying the paradigmatic structure of a subset of German connectives but also of explaining the semantic and stylistic properties of complex sentences.
In recent years, formal semantic research on the meaning of tense and aspect has benefited from a number of studies investigating languages with graded tense systems. This paper contributes a first sketch of the temporal marking system of Awing (Grassfields Bantu), focusing on two varieties of remote past and remote future. We argue that the data support a "symmetric" analysis of past and future tense in Awing. In our specific proposal, Awing temporal remoteness markers are uniformly analyzed as quantificational tense operators, and both the past and the future paradigm include a form that prevents contextual restriction of this temporal quantifier.
Vorwort
(2009)